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I'm trying to help a guy get Leopard installed onto his G4 iMac. It's the 1.0Ghz 17" version with 1.25GB RAM.

The install on the HDD at the moment is borked, it's 10.2.8. It won't open any DMG files, basically says "The application cannot be launched because this system is incompatible" even with the genuine combo update for that OS from Apple.

It won't read dual layer discs nor read NTFS drives.

The guy has another MacBook 13" with 10.6.8 on it which I loaded the Leopard DMG onto and transferred to the iMac over network (Took 4 hours!) and my plan then was to create a partition on the HDD about 8GB and restore the Leopard DMG onto that through Disk Utility then boot holding the option key and selecting that partition to start setup.

However, when I open Disk Utility, all of the options are greyed out. I tried Verify then Repair Disk Permissions for the only partition on the disk - but this made no change.

My next thought, was to pop the Leopard DVD into his MacBook and buy a firewire cable then use Target Disk Mode to kick off the install that way - turns out that the MacBook also has an issue of it's own ... it won't read any DVD's - takes them in and spits them out again.

Any thoughts on how I can get Leopard installed to this system? Below are some photos showing the error message when opening a DMG and also the partition screen.

I don't have my own Mac at the moment as it may seem in the signature.

Doubt it. Despite some stating otherwise yet to find any G4 that will boot from USB - too slow. Why not boot from the Leopard black retail install DVD, erase the iMac's drive and do a clean install. You do have the Leopard disc?

Hang on to those original install discs like grim death! Using OS X.7 or later make a bootable USB thumb drive before running Installer!

Doubt it. Despite some stating otherwise yet to find any G4 that will boot from USB - too slow. Why not boot from the Leopard black retail install DVD, erase the iMac's drive and do a clean install. You do have the Leopard disc?

Yip, however the iMac won't read it. I'm not sure if it's a drive issue or because I assume the disc is dual layer and the drive can't read them?

Seems the drive on the G4 iMac is goosed, it won't read any discs at all.

I've priced up some FireWire optical drives, much too expensive for this sort of thing and to be fair it wouldn't be used any other time than this one.

I've ordered a 6Pin M-M FireWire Cable - Would this work; on the MacBook I create a partition and restore the Leopard DMG Image to it ... Power off and start in TDM then connect to the G4 iMac and attempt to boot holding option - would it recognise the OSX Setup in the created partition?

I'm not sure why the partition is grayed out. I'm also not sure how connecting a PPC Mac to an Intel Mac will work out as far as formatting and installing OS X. What I do know is that PPC Mac drives must be booted from a drive with an APM partition scheme, while Intel Macs use GUID. How this difference will affect what you propose… I do not know.

What you need is to get a DVD drive going somehow. What you can try is using a USB drive on the MacBook; boot the MacBook in Target Disk Mode; connect the MacBook to the iMac G4; then reboot the iMac and hold the OPTION key down while booting up. It should see the DVD drive on the MacBook.

I'm unclear on why you mention how the drive won't read dual-layer discs. Do you even have a proper Leopard install disc for the iMac?